Tag: Kevin McMahon

At the end of March, 2020 I published an article on this website covering a ‘miscarriage of justice’ claim to which I had become adjacent (read here). It, and four others that followed on the same topic, the murder of a Melsonby postmistress, were the product of well over 300 hours of research, interviews and correspondence.

A journey that started out as a concern that one of the four police forces I routinely scrutinise had screwed up yet another major investigation (read more here), ended up in a very different place.

North Yorkshire Police did, unsurprisingly, make a series of grotesque mistakes after the senseless attack at Melsonby Village Stores and Post Office by shopkeeper, 44 year old Robin Garbutt, on his postmistress wife, Diana. The popular, vivacious 40 year old was killed by three brutal blows to the head with a rusty iron bar as she, apparently, lay sleeping in her bed in the early hours of 23rd March, 2010.

Her husband was convicted of the murder just over a year later and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently serving that term at HMP Frankland in County Durham and parole cannot be considered until he has served at least 20 years.

Justice campaign is formed

Shortly after the trial ended a campaign was formed protesting his innocence. The two founders were Sallie Wood, Robin Garbutt’s sister and Mark Stilborn, his brother-in-law. They have a very rudimentary website, absent of any substantive material and rarely updated (click here). A failed appeal at the Court of Appeal in London against Garbutt’s conviction was then followed by two unsuccessful applications to the Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC). Those events occurred in 2012, 2015 and 2018 respectively.

Jane Metcalfe (left), Mark Stilborn and Sallie Wood

The two family members were joined some years later by Jane Metcalfe whom, enigmatically, describes herself as ‘an old friend’ of the murderer. Other local newspaper reports say she knew Garbutt from the time when he lived in York. She works in the Additional Learning Support Team at Askham Bryan College on the outskirts of the city.

She now leads the campaign and has attained a high profile in the media, and amongst other justice campaigners, within a relatively short time. Her outpourings on social media tend to suggest there is more to the relationship than a former acquaintance for whom she feels sorry.

The catalyst for the articles was a third application to the CCRC submitted by Garbutt’s legal team in January, 2020.

Work in progress

It was to Jane, therefore, that I turned when I needed information to back up the articles that were, at that time, very much a work in progress. Her first email was sent on 30th January, 2020, but after 57 further exchanges, with little or no progress, it was suggested, by me, that the correspondence between us be brought to a close and the articles remain grounded in what was either publicly accessible, or available to a resourceful journalist.

There was always the suspicion, throughout our contact, that Jane was disclosing correspondence marked ‘strictly private and confidential’ to others. It was also drawn to Jane’s attention, several times, that those emails carried journalistic privilege and were not to be shared without my express approval. That confidentiality and privilege has now lapsed, to the limited extent that, within this article, information from just two of the emails is shared. Given the high profile nature of the campaign, widely reported on television and in the press, it is very much in the public interest to do so, in order to give context to what is being said to those media outlets – and a better understanding of the questionable behaviour of the campaigners after publication of my Robin Garbutt articles.

The situation regarding the sharing of the emails, and it later emerged that the suspicion was well grounded, gave the appearance that Jane was simply a puppet at the front of the stage – and unseen hands were pulling the campaign strings. She is in very regular contact with Robin Garbutt and his mother, Joyce Brook. They also travel together on prison visits. The level and frequency of contact with other Garbutt campaigners is not known.

Nevertheless, it was a cordial exchange between us, throughout, with the only tense moments arriving after I had sent her a list of questions that went to the heart of both the murder case and the miscarriage of justice campaign.

The list of questions:

– CCRC applications: What were the dates (month, year) upon which the first two applications were made. Correspondingly, on what dates were the decisions disclosed to Robin. Sight of those applications and decisions would be very helpful (they are not publicly accessible)?

– Diana’s credit card was declined at the cash and carry in Stockton on the evening before the murder: Had the credit limit been exceeded – and do you know what the limit was? Or was there another problem, expiry date for example?

– Was her maiden name Kiefer or Kieffer?

– There are conflicting reports of whether Diana was ‘on’ or ‘in’ the bed when she was found on the morning of the murder; Which is correct?

– She was reported to be in night attire: Was that pyjamas or nightdress?

– Do you have a photograph of the pillow with the clump of hair on it (not for publication I might add)?

– Is the report that Robin opened the shop at around 4.30am correct, and that the first customers came into the shop around 5.15pm?

– Did Robin and Diana habitually sleep together?

– Did the stairs ‘creak’? It is an old property.

– Was there a toilet downstairs in the living quarters of the shop?

– If a toilet flushed upstairs could that be heard in the shop?

– Who unlocked the back door to the shop, and at what time, on the day of the murder?

– Was Robin able to give the police a description of the gun (eg round barrel like a Smith and Wesson or ‘square’ barrel like a Glock)?

– Did Robin notice if the gun had a sound moderator (silencer) fitted?

– There are conflicting versions as to whether the entry into the shop by the robber was via upstairs, or from the living quarters: Which is correct to the best of your knowledge?

– Did Robin report any blood on the clothing of the robber?

– Was he (the robber) wearing gloves?

– Can you shed light on why Diana is reported to have spoken through the door to Robin, several times, on the fateful morning, rather than popped her head round the door, or entered the shop to speak to Robin?

– It was said in court that Diana, habitually, did not rise until 8.30am or later: What arrangements did the couple normally have for Robin to take a toilet or refreshment break, for example, in the four hours or so between the shop opening and Diana’s first appearance in the shop each day?

– I have identified three people, apart from Robin and Diana, who assisted in the shop from time to time: Did any of them work on a Tuesday, usually.

– Did Robin, at any time, have sight or sound of a second robber on the morning of the murder.

– From what was said by the robbers in the shop in 2009, and again by the robber in 2010, was Robin able to give the police a clue as to accent or dialect?

– In Robin’s opinion, is there a connection, from physical description, posture, voice, between the 2010 robber in the shop and one of the two robbers in 2009?

– It is reported that the two robbers in 2009 wore hoods, in addition were their faces covered?

– Would Robin describe the gun brandished in both robberies as similar, or the same?

– How big was the holdall used in the 2010 robbery? Was a similar bag used in 2009, if not was Robin able to describe to the police what they used to carry away the proceeds?

– Where is the most likely place that a getaway car would be situated, close to the post office? Would such a location make the direction of exit from the village to the north, south, east or west?

– Where did Robin stay after the murder and for the three weeks leading up to his arrest?

– It is said that he spent part of the afternoon of the murder giving a witness statement to police and the whole of another day (a Sunday) assisting the police with enquiries: Was he treated as a witness on those occasions. That is to say, not cautioned and offered legal representation?

– How frequently was there contact with NYP’s Family Liaison Officer: Do you have name, collar number of that officer? Was he/she a uniformed officer or a detective?

– How many witness statements did Robin make in total?

– Was there a transcription of the tapes from the interviews over the five days he was held before charging?

– As a remand prisoner at Holme Hall was he alone in a cell, or did he have cell mate(s)? A police trick is to put an informant in with a prisoner they are trying to convict, to try to get him to talk about the alleged offences for which he is being held.

– Was he visited by NYP officers during the remand period and offered ‘a deal’ if he pleaded guilty (standard NYP tactic)? If so, what was the deal?

[At the time of sending the questions I was not aware of the layout of either the ground floor or the first floor of the premises]

* * * * *

Readers are invited to judge for themselves whether those questions should alarm any honestly grounded miscarriage of justice campaign.

In spite of her previous promise, repeated several times, that all questions would be answered, and I would receive complete assurance that Garbutt was an innocent man, this is the relevant part of Jane’s response:

“As soon as I get time I will look through your list, most of which I am sure I can answer…I just need to triple check with you what your plan is, your agenda is Neil? I need to know for sure that your agenda will help progress mine…we only have the truth and that is all there ever has been from Robin…you have seen enough in your job to understand I’m sure where I’m coming from, I really hope so anyway”.

My response was plainly expressed and, one would hope, very fair to all concerned:

“The only agenda I have is a search for the truth. To see that justice is done for Diana and her family. That is my vocation as an investigative journalist and how I eke out a living.

“My principal motivation is to force NYP to re-open the Garbutt investigation, as the evidence, as I see it, points to the person who struck the fatal blows to Diana’s head still being at large.

“My starting point was not as a cheerleader for Robin’s campaign, but as an independent investigation – and I hope that was made sufficiently clear from the outset. It is precisely the position that is rehearsed in the article’s opening paragraphs.

“What is written in the rest of my articles (there are now two and, possibly, three) is a summary of the assembled facts, reports and evidence, that are publicly available to me. Plus, what I have gleaned about the case from my other sources and network of informants.

“Around those facts I have applied my own specialist knowledge. Where there are gaps, or inconsistencies, or an unwillingness to provide them, then I am, of course, forced to draw inference. Which is unusual, as when I investigate a case it is customary to be given access to all the case documents. On the very sound principle that a falsely convicted person should have nothing to hide.

“To be frank, I’m uncomfortable with you questioning my integrity or intentions (and previously, on more than one occasion, my ability to maintain confidentiality).

“My instinct is to say; let us leave our communication here and then you cannot chastise yourself if how the facts and evidence are ultimately presented, viewed through my lens, does not fit the campaign narrative.

“It is still, of course, open to you, or the campaigners as a collective, to provide a statement for inclusion in the article, if you so wish.”

An open book policy

Jane Metcalfe had claimed that an emailed request, on 6th March, 2020, for sight of Robin Garbutt’s witness statements, was not received by her. The only one of twenty-nine emails, sent in a fairly compressed timescale, seemingly not to arrive in her inbox. A second request appeared to create panic, which simply underscored the perception that the first request had been ignored, hoping it would not re-surface.

That is the pre-amble to the sending of the list of questions, many of which would have been, presumably, unnecessary as the police, one generously assumes, would have made similar enquiries of Garbutt during many hours of interviews.

The answers to most of those questions have since been obtained through other enquiries, but not without a great deal of extra time and effort. Not entirely wasted, as the search opened up other lines of investigation. None of them, it must be said, favourable to the Garbutt innocence narrative.

In every other miscarriage of justice claim, or case, to which I have been adjacent there has been an open book policy: All police, prosecution and defence materials made available. Nothing held back. Yet the Garbutt campaigners follow a different track; filtering out, it seems, material that may undermine their narrative or harm their case.

One of the competencies for which I am recognised, limited though they are, is said to be a sharp eye for detail and picking up on matters others might have missed. Another is a very good knowledge of police and prosecution practice (and malpractice), aided and trusted by a large number of contacts and informants within the criminal justice system.

The provisional conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that Robin Garbutt, and his family and friends, do not welcome that type of interrogative approach for fear of what might be uncovered and, subsequently, enter the public domain. Preferring, it seems, media outlets where they have control over the narrative. Or, where, perhaps, a less rigorous evaluation is undertaken.

Campaigners protest outside Royal Courts of Justice

Organised smear campaign

After publication of the first Robin Garbutt article, a series of personalised attacks, with the appearance of being an organised smear campaign, was launched against me. Jane Metcalfe appeared to be central to it. If so, it was a dramatic turnaround from the routine, gushing praise that featured in our earlier email exchanges and her slavish liking of almost everything I posted on Facebook. She says on Twitter, using a curiously named anonymous account (@hanksoff03), that I am ‘not to be trusted’ as ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing‘. Adding, ‘my instincts were right not to share sensitive information with him’. Laughable, in any event, as the quashing of a criminal conviction is not a process conducted under a veil of secrecy. But, more particularly, as I, very probably, handle more police whistleblowers than any other journalist in the country and, as a court reporter, accredited by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service (HMCTS), frequently hear legal submissions from which juries and the public are all excluded. As a journalist, I also routinely receive embargoed materials from public authorities ahead of a nominated time and date for release into the public domain.

The others appear close to her: Michelle Diskin Bates, whose brother Barry George was ultimately cleared of the murder of BBC presenter Jill Dando, having been convicted in 2001 (read more here). This is one of her peurile social media posts about the case, entirely devoid of fact: “Robin Garbutt had this [Horizon Post Office software] used against him in a murder trial, he was a postmaster. He’s Innocent. The evidence was ‘bad character’ based on the supposed theft! Since there was nothing to link him to the murder, and Horzon (sic) was to blame, case should be reviewed”. Horizon wasn’t used against Garbutt at trial, he said the contents of the safe matched the post office accounts; he wasn’t a postmaster; the judge gave a standard ‘good character’ direction to jury; there was a welter of circumstantial evidence that led the jury to convict him.

Diskin Bates claims that, in publishing the first article, I had ‘jumped on the Robin Garbutt bandwagon’. After the second, third, fourth and fifth articles her view may have changed. The ‘bandwagon’ hit some fairly large bumps in the road and has now been brought to a virtual halt.

William Beck, an uncouth, sweary, know-it-all Glaswegian, and convicted armed robber (read more here), is plainly aligned to the knockers. He also offers, in the style of the other campaigners, another fact-free assertion: ‘You have criticised NYP many times yet you appear to accept everything they say about Garbutt as gospel. Please make up your mind’. The truth is: Facts rehearsed in the article, regarding NYP, are what was heard either in Crown Court or at the Court of Appeal. Or what Garbutt himself, or the campaigners, have said. My scathing view on that police force’s lamentable investigative capabilities, in major crime incidents, remains unchanged by what I have learned about the Garbutt case.

Some of “Wullie’s” criticism was rather more coarse: “Get f*****g real ya fanny just can’t be arsed with arseholes today so f**k right off” is an example.

Diskin Bates thought that was hilarious and posted a GIF to that effect below her friend’s post. Which merely adds weight to the proposition that Garbutt is, variously, surrounded by lightweights, crackpots and the gullible.

But, most notable both for the class, and persistence, of abuse was Michael Naughton. Agobbyformer special constable and military police officer who now, rather grandly, claims to be ‘the UK’s leading miscarriage of justice investigator’. He has, also, publicly claimed that Robin Garbutt is ‘a client’, although his website, with its numerous exaggerated assertions, is silent on that point.

Naughton runs two low-follower Twitter accounts. One of them, @reliableintel1, with just 2 people (or bots) interested in its output, set up to troll the budget airline Easyjet, and me, it seems. He has, rather oddly, used that social media account to announce that there is ‘sensitive legal information’ that will clear Garbutt after describing the articles about the murderer as the ‘rantings of a bitter and twisted man’.

He does not assist his two followers with an explanation as to the source of the bitterness or contortions, or which parts of what are, in effect, neutrally written and much expanded court reports, can be characterised as ‘rantings’.

The other Twitter account, in the name of his business, the enigmatically styled ‘Lewis Legal‘, has just 46 followers, set against his own boast that he is very popular and has many friends. By contrast, the @Neil_Wilby Twitter account has 5,588 followers, many of them highly influential; fellow journalists, senior police officers, judges, QC’s and other lawyers, senior politicians, academics, with a potential combined audience reach in the millions, at the latest count, and notifications running into the hundreds every day.

Having met him, seen his sub-optimal website and his social media output, it was always going to be a straightforward exercise to catch him out – and so it proved. He lied in open space about his use of social media, claiming he ‘rarely used Twitter’. After making around 300 (three hundred) posts in just over a month, between the two accounts he operates. There are other inconsistencies in what he says across those accounts, the output from which, complete with numerous syntax errors (also a feature of his website), is very often aggressive and unpleasant.

Unseen hand?

An unseen hand supporting these malcontents may well be namesake, Dr Michael Naughton, an academic and author who features regularly as a proponent in failed miscarriage of justice cases, including that of Beck and, most notably, the Simon Hall case. Hall confessed to the murder of Joan Albert after a long and sustained campaign to clear his name in which Naughton, and his Bristol University innocence project, was prominent. Hall committed suicide in prison after the confession (read more here). There appears to be bad blood between Naughton and Stephanie Hall, the murderer’s widow.

The latter has also been relentlessly critical of the Garbutt articles, and their author, but the basis of the criticism remains unclear as it appears that she, too, attaches little credence to his innocence claim. She does, however, assert, from a highly knowledgeable standpoint, that Jane Metcalfe has been ‘groomed’ by Garbutt – and on those two points we are in agreement.

Dr Naughton has also highlighted the Garbutt case as one of the strongest in his present portfolio. He is the driving force behind another low-follower Twitter entity known as Empowering The Innocent, which appears to have been set up to constantly attack, and undermine, the CCRC. Curiously, he appears very reluctant to use the Simon Hall case as a stick to beat them with. The criminal justice watchdog was seven months into their second investigation into Hall’s case, prior to the confession that he was, in fact, the murderer. His innocence bid had run for ten years prior to that and had gathered some very prominent figures into the campaign fold. Garbutt’s campaign is also in its tenth year, by way of a coincidence.

Jane Metcalfe unfailingly refers to Dr Naughton in reverential terms. To her, it seems, he is ‘The Miscarriage of Justice Messiah’ who will lift Robin from his Category A cage and transport him into her waiting arms. He also wrote the foreword to the Diskin Bates book, Stand Against Injustice (read more here).

During my investigation, Dr Naughton was invited to explain the evidential basis of his very public support for the Garbutt innocence campaign. He did not even acknowledge the email – and his silence when asked simple questions, via social media, is similarly deafening. He is perfectly entitled to adopt that stance, of course, but the independent observer might well question that as odd from a person who appears to purposefully seek out the limelight and act as a rallying point for justice campaigners.

A hazard of the vocation

The fact that any reader does not care for what a journalist writes is a hazard of our vocation. As is unvarnished public criticism of the content, although that usually carries more force if there is a challenge to the facts, and reasoning, attached to it. But when it simply amounts to an ugly ad hominem attack on an author’s personal qualities, credibility, integrity and ability to investigate, that is when alarm bells should sound. Especially, after right to reply has been spurned by that same person, or “team”, as they describe themselves.

Even more so, when the attackers point to articles on the same topic ‘in other credible, professional publications’ that have schoolboy errors within them and are, palpably, lacking in rigour. In this particular case, Private Eye and The Justice Gap. Neither of whom appear to have read, or digested, the 2012 Court of Appeal judgment, or the transcript of the judge’s summing up of the murder trial. Or, alternatively, if they did, there was a signal failure to apprehend how seriously both documents undermine the Garbutt innocence claim.

The Garbutt campaigners, and ‘the UK’s leading miscarriage of justice investigator’, are also blissfully unaware that I have previously contributed to TheJustice Gap website (read here) and was also the principal source for most of the investigative material that went into this unusually lengthy Private Eye article (read here).

What is written in the articles on this website, with its hundreds of thousands of page impressions, is firmly grounded in those two court documents, together with a piecing together of a timeline from other contemporaneous press or TV reports – and a variety of other trusted sources, including witnesses at the trial and very senior retired police officers, one of whom grew up in the village where Diana Garbutt was murdered. To the extent that it would be very surprising indeed if the articles could not withstand a challenge as to their accuracy and independence.

But they have not been challenged in any of their specifics: “This is wrong because of ‘x’; that is a mistake and should have been ‘y'”. It is the conclusion Robin Garbutt talked himself into prison, by first lying to the police, after inviting attention to himself with some bizarre behaviour, and then, much more crucially, lying to the court from the witness box, that is the problem for the campaigners: There was no armed robbery by a passing psychopath on the day of Diana’s murder, as Garbutt claimed, absent of a single scrap of evidence other than an empty safe.

The ‘Robin has always told the truth’ fallacy

The very foundation of the Garbutt innocence campaign is now exposed as being falsely grounded, built on the shifting sands of ‘Robin has always told the truth’. In other words, it was a fraud on those unsuspecting members of the press, the public, and others in the miscarriage of justice fraternity, who were simply prepared to take Jane Metcalfe at her word. For it is she, since taking over as the main spokesperson, that appears to have developed and propagated this mantra.

If the Neil Wilby articles achieved nothing else, they did put a stop to this particular, and grotesquely dishonest, line of campaigning. One that must be very hurtful to the victim’s family, towards whom the campaigners appear to show disappointingly little regard. The opinion of Diana’s mother, Agnes Gaylor, that the right man is in prison for the murder is curtly dismissed by them, with a veiled proposition that she is not in possession of ‘all the facts’.

Notwithstanding the campaigners’ claim, Mrs Gaylor sat through every day of a four week trial and her observation is grounded in what she saw and heard there. It was the same conclusion as the jury, the judge and the police. Later, that view was heavily underscored by three law lords sitting at the appeal court in London.

That position was put to the campaigners in a televised interview with the three principals, by ITV’s Jon Hill earlier this year (view the package here). It is the nearest any media outlet has come to asking a remotely searching question. Their response was that ‘there is nothing left of the prosecution case‘ without, it seems, actually understanding what the prosecution case (and strategy) was. There also appears to be a naievity surrounding the hurdle that has to be overcome before a referral can be made to the appeal court by the CCRC and, even higher, for three different law lords to go behind the findings of both the jury and their own legal peers involved in the 2012 judgment.

For the avoidance of doubt, the jury had two relatively simple scenarios to consider: Did a passing, psychopathic armed robber go upstairs and, without motive, kill Diana Garbutt, with a rust-flaked iron bar he had taken to the scene, before going back down and robbing the post office safe, and the shop till, at gunpoint, leaving the only witness completely unharmed; or, was there no armed robber and Robin killed his wife having emptied the till and safe for himself?

After hearing all the evidence, and the best arguments of the prosecutor and the defence barrister, in their respective closing speeches, directed on the law by an experienced judge, the rest is history.

It is the Court of Appeal judgment, referred to by Jon Hill, that persuades me that Robin Garbutt will never be cleared of the murder, unless the perpetrators of the armed robbery he claims took place are apprehended, tried and convicted. As the police are not investigating a ‘crime’ they strongly believe did not take place, then the chances of such an occurrence are very, very small indeed. Resting entirely on a fortuitous match of unknown DNA found on the murder weapon with a male not yet on the Police National Computer database.

‘Worse than the gutter press’

So, what would be so offensive to the Garbutt campaigners that they would attack a conclusion reasoned in that way with such spite and malice – and in such a very personalised way? Naughton (the private investigator) has described the articles as ‘worse than the gutter press’ and me, variously, as ‘a trouble causer whom nobody likes’; a ‘nasty little nobody’; ‘couldn’t be trusted’, accompanied by dark mutterings about what I might, or might not be, if one scratched beneath the surface. He might, in my certain knowledge, be better engaged by enquiring about the bona fides of at least one other high profile Garbutt supporter.

Diskin Bates simply characterises anyone who doesn’t agree with her views as a ‘nasty troll’ whom she likes to OUT (her emphasis). ‘What on Earth is this?’ she exclaimed to her 448 followers on Twitter when quote tweeting a post of mine that included a weblink to the first of my articles. ‘Robin Garbutt is innocent’ she added breathlessly. But made no reply when asked if she’d either seen, or read, the Garbutt Court of Appeal judgment. The answer to that was almost certain to be ‘No’. It may still be?

She is also a highly vocal supporter of the perpetual Jeremy Bamber is innocent campaign. Another lost cause to anyone who has ploughed through the three publicly available court judgments on the case. Most notably, the mammoth 522 paragraph Court of Appeal findings after Bamber’s appeal in 2002 (for those with the time and patience click here). 10 years later Bamber was to be back at the Royal Courts of Justice, where a Divisional Court peremptorily dismissed the best of the murderer’s arguments that he had accumulated since the failed 2002 appeal (read here). An appeal in 2009, against the full life term imposed on Bamber, also failed. He will spend the rest of his life in prison.

A favourite line of “Wullie” Beck is that all judges and barristers are bent – and all trials, appeals are a fix. He was incredulous that, as a court reporter, I couldn’t adopt that view. But that, regrettably, is the calibre of supporter in the Garbutt enclave.

The innocence fraud phenomenon

Up until shortly after publishing the first Robin Garbutt article, I had never come across the term ‘innocence fraud’. Since then, enough has been learned about the phenomenon to be able to characterise the Garbutt campaign as a serious contender for inclusion in that category. Alongside the Simon Hall and Bamber cases.

There is a concerning culture of deceit and, at times, flagrant dishonesty amongst Garbutt’s leading proponents; the most visible effects of which are to lie about his own integrity: It is, quite simply, preposterous to claim, repeatedly, that he has always told the truth; conflating a poor police investigation with a wrongful conviction; a continued focus on matters already the subject of disposal by the criminal justice system; the refusal to disclose materials that would inform the public more fully about the merits, or otherwise, of the campaign, for example the Decision Letters and Statements of Reasons from the previous two CCRC applications; avoiding questions about the case where a straight answer, honestly given, might well put a critic firmly in his, or her, place; and mindless, vitriolic, personalised attacks on any person the campaigners identify as railing against the innocence narrative. It is also concerning that Sallie Wood says on the campaign website ‘I will stop at nothing to clear Robin’s name‘.

Interestingly, the Bamber campaign shares at least some of those unfortunate traits and it is no surprise at all to find the same class of individual populating both. Michelle Diskin Bates is a Patron of the Bamber campaign.

United Against Injustice?

A more surprising connection to this Garbutt story, and the festering, ill-informed malcontents surrounding it, is United Against Injustice (UAI), an organisation, and its leading lights, well known to me for the past nine years. Kevin McMahon, a likeable, erudite former Merseyside Police civilian officer, is one of the co-founders; Andrew Green, an academic with a strong interest and long-term background in innocence projects, is the other. McMahon, like his friend Michael Naughton, has also served with the military police.

The link to their website appears dead and UAI have a limited presence on social media.

The UAI treasurer is (or, at least, was) Eric Major, whose son’s miscarriage of justice campaign, and my former role within it, is covered elsewhere on this website (read more here). When I was considered useful to the Major family, Eric and I were very good friends. Now, he does not even afford me the courtesy of acknowledging or responding to emails. Entirely his prerogative, of course, but disappointing on both a personal and professional level, nevertheless.

On 12th April, 2020 a message was sent to him expressing concern at the behaviour of the Garbutt campaigners and how that might impact adversely on UAI. A request was made to pass it on to the founders. No-one has made contact with me since, as a result of that email, but both Green (see also concluding paras in this article) and McMahon are aware, via social media, of the concerns I have. The latter is particularly friendly with Jane Metcalfe and appears highly supportive of the Garbutt innocence campaign on social media. As he does with the Bamber campaign.

Jane Metcalfe had attended UAI’s annual conferences, held at John Moores University in Liverpool, both in October, 2018 and as a speaker in October 2019. In fact, she sat one row below me in the lecture theatre, just a few feet away. Michael Naughton, the private investigator, was sat next to Metcalfe and directly in front of me; he made a point of introducing himself and handing me his business card. Just along the same row as me was Michelle Diskin Bates, sat alongside her brother, Barry George, who also was a speaker on the day.

Diskin Bates, according to McMahon is the “much loved” Patron of UAI.

The main purpose of the conference visit, apart from to renew old acquaintances, was to hear the talk given by the three representatives of the CCRC – and take part in a Q&A with them afterwards.

To complete the circle, amongst the other speakers on the day was Trudi Benjamin, lead campaigner for Jeremy Bamber. Irrespective of the merits, hers was a genuinely awful presentation, amounting to a boring, flat-tone monologue, read from a script. In complete contrast to the quite brilliant, straight from the heart, burning sense of injustice presentation from the Shrewsbury 24 campaigners. One of the best I have ever encountered (read more here). The audience heard, amongst the remarkable tale of the campaign’s journey, that on 30th April 2019, midway through a Judicial Review hearing in the Birmingham Administrative Court, the CCRC had agreed to withdraw its previous decision not to refer the pickets’ cases to the Court of Appeal. They agreed, by consent order, that they would reconsider the case.

Accordingly, and in a remarkable turnaround, on 5th March, 2020 it was reported that the CCRC had finally referred the pickets’ case to the Court of Appeal, based on new evidence unearthed by the remarkable Eileen Turnbull, the Shrewsbury 24 researcher and secretary (read more here).

How UAI selects its patrons, runs its organisation, and its long-standing and well respected conference is, of course, entirely a matter for Kevin McMahon and his co-officials. Who am I to question them? But condoning, or failing to challenge, the type of behaviour reported upon here – and giving encouragement to cases that are repeatedly clogging up the criminal appeal system would be matters of public concern – and ones they should address in open space.

McMahon is, of course, familiar with the Court of Appeal, having failed to overturn a conviction for doing an act tending to, and intended to, pervert the course of justice. He was found guilty of the offence at Liverpool Crown Court in June, 2004 after the jury had heard there had been an attempt to interfere with a key witness, prior to an appeal hearing. He was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, suspended for two years.

What happens next with the Garbutt campaign?

The CCRC was due to give a decision on or about 30th April, 2020 as to whether Robin Garbutt’s third application to them, submitted at the end of January, 2020 actually merits investigation. The watchdog has been approached to ascertain whether that decision has been communicated to him. Or, if not, an estimate as to when it is likely to be sent. An enquiry has also been made as to whether either of the previous two applications were investigated, or simply rejected on their face.

What is known is that neither of the previous decisions by the CCRC was challenged at court by way of a judicial review application, which would, at least, have put their substance, or otherwise, into the public domain. Nor is there any mention of them on the campaign website. Jane Metcalfe was unwilling to even give me the dates when they were made and when they were dismissed by the watchdog. From all of that, and taking the third application as a further guide, the independent reviewer is entitled to infer that both previous applications were misconceived.

The modus operandus of the Garbutt campaigners has been to say nothing, publicly, when the CCRC rejected the previous two applications. They may not have that same option this time having created their own blaze of publicity. If the latest Garbutt bid for freedom falls flat yet again, there is some explaining to do. In public.

There appears to be no political or policing body support for the campaign. The Garbutt website still lists William Hague as his MP, even though he retired in 2015. The other campaigners would each be perfectly entitled to contact their own representative in Parliament for assistance. That would bring Julian Sturdy and Kevin Hollinrake into the equation. There is no evidence available to suggest they have done so.

Instead, Metcalfe, she says, has written to the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, asking her to intervene. It is simply astonishing that those ‘experts’ around the campaign who should know better, haven’t explained to Jane that Ms Patel has no locus in such matters. Naughton the investigator has, even more ludicrously, suggested she write to Max HillQC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, whose CPS representative would be in the appeal court, opposing the attempt to quash the conviction, in the unlikely event the case progressed that far.

Also, there has never been any mention of an approach being made by Garbutt, or his representatives, to the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, Julia Mulligan, regarding the abject failings of the police force, over which she has statutory oversight responsibility (holding the chief constable to account).

One feasible conclusion available to draw from that is MP’s, and the PCC, would require all matters relating to the innocence camapign to be opened up to independent scrutiny, by their caseworkers, before deciding whether to support, or not. Perhaps, by way of an adjournment debate in Parliament?

But the bugbear is, that is precisely the type of open book process Robin Garbutt and his narrative-controlling band of supporters appear to fear most.

Jane Metcalfe, the two Naughtons, Michelle Diskin Bates and UAI (via Andrew Green) have all been offered right of reply.

The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, the Chief Constable for North Yorkshire, and the two MP’s mentioned in this article, Julian Sturdy and Kevin Hollinrake have also been approached for comment. As has William Hague.

Andrew Green has, since the publication of the article, kindly pointed out that he has not been involved with United Against Injustice since 2016. He was approached some time ago, via the INNOCENT organisation he has run for many years, by the Garbutt campaigners. He wanted to offer support, but was unable to do so as they refused to disclose anything beyond ‘he is a nice chap’.

Michael Naughton has not taken up his right of reply but has deleted the trolling Twitter account, @Reliableintel1, following publication of this article. His Lewis Legal account (@LEWISLEGALMISC1), meanwhile, continues to regularly spew out its familiar bile and nonsensical assertions. In amongst claiming he is ‘a good, honest, genuine guy with Christian values’. Which is wholly inconsistent with how he behaves in open space and the character traits evidenced elsewhere in this article.

The highly opinionated Naughton recently suggested on Twitter, in a quote re-tweet to Jane Metcalfe, that a Court of Appeal judgment (in this particular instance the dismissal of the posthumous appeal on behalf of Gordon Park) could be challenged by judicial review. This, from an individual who claims high expertise in challenging wrongful convictions, simply beggars belief.

Similarly, he claims that a fact he asserts is wrong in one of my articles (he does not state which fact or in which of the five articles it appears) could amount to a criminal offence by way of prejudicing a CCRC application. Which simply demonstrates further that Naughton has little real understanding of the criminal justice system: A sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Jane Metcalfe’s response to this article has been to carry on with the smear campaign. In a tweet posted on 24th May, 2020 she told her 166 followers that ‘….we too have come under fire from a very troubled individual who’s trying to cause harm‘.

Despite our obvious differences, I am sorry to report that Wullie Beck died suddenly on 20th May, 2020 after suffering a heart attack. He spent 39 years trying to clear his name. One of his main supporters, Dr Michael Naughton, told Scottish TV News: “I don’t say this lightly and I don’t say it about many other convicted people, but I believe he was innocent. The miscarriage of justice world has lost a big voice”.